zo6 BEHIND THE FRONT PAGE
$6,000,000 when the war ended. He received more than
$1,300,000 as compensation.
A chance quirk of business acumen on the part of a Chi-
cago firm netted a check from the Treasury reckoning $1,751
each for 98 kitchen utensils ordered for the army. In Au-
gust, 1918, this firm contracted to deliver fireless cookers,
bread boxes, and cooks' chests, and bought a stock of steel
and tin plating. When the Armistice came, the firm had de-
livered 66 cookers, 7 bread boxes and 25 cooks' chests. The
government allowed the company its cost price on the plating,
then sold it back as junk. The Treasury paid the company
$171,687.06 for its 98 kitchen utensils and good intentions.
There is a record of $3,000,000 paid to a Pittsburgh steel
company for toluol and ammonium sulphate never manu-
factured; of buildings erected for the government at a cost of
nearly $3,000,000 which were sold back to the firm for
$600,000.
One might continue indefinitely to set down facts and fig-
ures which to-day have no meaning except to demonstrate the
sheer madness of war as an institution. Unless a nation has
prepared systematically through decades and generations for
a struggle known to be brewing, as did France, Germany, and
Austro-Hungary, the material waste is stupendous. Whether
civilization was advanced by the latest great conflict is still
a matter of doubt. If this experience did nothing more, how-
ever, it taught us that the isolation we enjoyed is no more;
that war of world-wide proportions will inevitably knock on
our door; and that for a century to come we might as well
buttress our national policy of peace with sane though non-
provocative preparedness. Call it peace insurance—anything
you like*
The United States recovered from the most recent war
costs much more rapidly than did other nations, but what an